2004 DV-format kenundrum. On a deadline!

2004 DV-format kenundrum. On a deadline!
by Rudi Simmons on Apr 14, 2016 at 9:38:55 am

Ok.

I'm doing a retrospective, so some material is from 2004, but I can't seem to solve the codec. I installed every codec on my mac that I could find, and earlier this has solved all issues. But these files I can't figure out. Trying to open them in anything (quicktime, vlc etc) would result in "this is not a movie file".

A tiny breakthrough came when I added .dv to the files. They would open in quicktime and show the first few frames of the clip, but then just end up in a colorful mess soon enough:

One of the things I was looking at was to see if it was the dreaded miniDV LP mode, which would show a 32kHz audio sampling rate. But your media info does not show that; it shows 48kHz, which is as it should be.

Did you digitize from the original material? or did someone give you the files?

There were three common forms of DV - miniDV (consumer/prosumer), DVCPro (Panasonic), and DVCam (Sony).

DVCPro had a slightly wider video track width. Most DVCPro decks could play back DVCam tapes, sometimes as simply as flipping a switch before inserting the tape. But DVCam decks could not play a DVCPro tape.

Is it possible someone tried to transfer DVCPro tape using a DVCam deck? I am just coming up with a few wild theories.

Can you get your hands on an old PC from 2004 windows xp or even 98se? It might have native dv codecs that don't exist anywhere else or work for that matter. then, very carefully render them to png/tiff image sequence. png/tiff hasn't changed in 20 years. There are so many dead codecs now that were called "dv" back in the day.

Or heck, use the power of the internet, upload and challenge people to decipher the particular codec.